The flag, when flown at half-staff, should be first hoisted to the peak for an instant and then lowered to the half-staff position. The flag should be again raised to the peak before it is lowered for the day. On Memorial Day the flag should be displayed at half-staff until noon only, then raised to the top of the staff.
          —4 U. S. C., §7 (emphasis added)

If a traffic signal is not functioning at an intersection, all drivers must treat the intersection as if a stop sign is posted for all directions.
          —2010 Driver’s Manual (GA)

This public service announcement brought to you by those of us who do not wish to be killed or injured in chaos at an intersection where power to the traffic signal has been lost.

• Why Privacy Matters Even if You Have ‘Nothing to Hide’

Once again it’s been over a year since the last post in the Camino Tips series, but we’re back with another one.

Recently, going “Flash-free” (and cheating by using Google Chrome when you hit a Flash-only website) has become all the rage on the web; you can do so in Camino, too, with a little help from AppleScript and/or Automator.

Short version:

1. Uninstall the Flash Player plug-in by moving Flash Player.plugin and flashplayer.xpt from /Library/Internet Plug-ins to some other location.
2. Install one of the solutions below to facilitate opening the current page in Google Chrome (which ships with its own built-in copy of the Flash plug-in).

Toolbar Script solution

Carlo Gandolfi (aka gand, of FreeSMUG and Portable Camino fame) wrote a short AppleScript that can be used as a toolbar script; if you’re on a page with Flash that you need to be able to view, you can click the toolbar button to open the page in Google Chrome.

For more information about this method and to download the toolbar AppleScript, see Going Flash-Free with Camino on FreeSMUG.

Automator-based Service solution

Philippe Wittenbergh, always mindful of the keyboard accessibility of features and tricks, adapted the toolbar script solution into an Automator-based Service for Mac OS X 10.6 (it can probably be adapted for use with ThisService for users on Mac OS X 10.5); if you’re on a page with Flash that you need to be able to view, you can use the keyboard shortcut you’ve assigned to the Service to open the page in Google Chrome.

For more information about this method and to download the Automator workflow, see Workflow for a nearly Flash-less online life with Camino at ::[Empty Spaces]::.

—

Thanks to Carlo and Philippe for putting these tools and their instructions together (it’s something I had wanted to do for quite a while now, but, as usual of late, never found the time to do)!

As a step in the right direction, though, I offer these links to some nifty graphics to keep your mind sharp for the weekend:

• Tallest Mountain to Deepest Ocean Trench from Our Amazing Planet
  • I never realized the Statue of Liberty was so short!
• Locals and Tourists from Eric Fischer
  • Having been a tourist in nearly a dozen of these places, a former resident of one,¹ and a general geography buff, it’s fascinating to see the places we find interesting, and the differences around the world (Greater Cairo, for instance, has a relatively low density of photographs, and an even-lower density of definable locals—but it is fun to see the tourists on felucca rides in the Nile!).

¹ Or two, by the definition used in the compilation—had I uploaded any photos to Flickr, of course. ↩

• How to manipulate me (or, Tuesday Whipper-Snapping)
• Don’t offer $50 for your favorite feature
• Anatomy of a feature

(Thanks to Brent for doing all the hard work of writing these articles, and apologies for appropriating your name for the title of this anthology.)

[J]ailbreak users expect everything to magically just work and will blame legit apps, rather than the hacks they’re running, for crashes.

Substitute “Users of InputManager hacks” for “Jailbreak users” and you have the bane of the Mac software developer’s existence.

Sadly, you can also substitute “Users of NPAPI plug-ins” for “Jailbreak users” and “legitimate browser plug-ins” for “hacks” and explain most web browser (and many web view-using application) crashes, which are the bane of the web browser developer’s existence.¹

¹ Simmons’s final lament is just as true for web browsers as it is for non-browser applications that use a web view. ↩

I didn’t expect to find "Jackass of the Week" material featured on Ars.

(Hat tip to Daring Fireball.)

Interestingly, we did receive quite a few applications about improving OOXML support, while we got zero OpenDocument related proposals. Apparently the support for the OpenDocument ISO standard isn’t strong enough in the F/OSS community to actually make an effort to improve support for it. Even when paid. Food for thought.

Both sad and disturbing for advocates of truly free and open standards for document formats (of which I am one).

Update: Chris Lawson notes that the BBC has been using Camino in screenshots on the web for a while, but this is still a whole new level of cool.

Camino doesn’t often get a lot of “high-profile” internet press like “that other browser”—we do have a few fans like tech journalist and blogger Om Malik, browser polygamist extraordinaire (and our very own “staff” designer) Jon Hicks, noted purveyor of Mac nerdery John Gruber, and a couple of others I’m forgetting (sorry!) who write about Camino releases regularly—so it’s always nice to see a new fan among the movers-and-shakers of the web world. Today we hear that noted web standards advocate (and more) Molly Holzschlag is also a Camino fan.

It’s a fun Monday.